LOOT

Introduction

LOOT is a plugin load order optimiser for:

• Starfield
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (and Anniversary Edition)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
• Fallout 3
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Fallout 4
• Fallout 4 VR
• Nehrim: At Fate's Edge
• Enderal: Forgotten Stories
• Enderal: Forgotten Stories (Special Edition)

LOOT can automatically calculate a load order that satisfies all plugin dependencies and maximises each plugin's impact on your game. It can also detect many issues, and provides a large number of plugin-specific usage notes, warnings and Bash Tag suggestions for Wrye Bash.

While LOOT can correctly handle the vast majority of plugins without help, some plugins need additional metadata to be sorted correctly. LOOT has a masterlist of metadata for each supported game, and you can add more to customise LOOT's behaviour.

LOOT helps make using mods easier, and you should still possess a working knowledge of mod load ordering. See Introduction To Load Orders for an overview.

Downloads

Releases are hosted on GitHub. Linux users should install LOOT from Flathub.

Snapshot builds are available as artifacts from GitHub Actions runs, though they are only kept for 90 days and can only be downloaded when logged into a GitHub account. To mitigate these restrictions, snapshot build artifacts include a GPG signature that can be verified using the public key hosted here, which means it's possible to re-upload the artifacts elsewhere and still prove their authenticity.

The snapshot build artifacts are named like so:

loot_<last tag>-<revisions since tag>-g<short revision ID>_<branch>-<platform>.<file extension>

Snapshot builds are also provided as single-file Flatpak bundles, which can be installed like so:

flatpak --user install ~/Downloads/loot.flatpak

You may also want to install the Adwaita theme:

flatpak install flathub org.kde.KStyle.Adwaita//6.8

Building LOOT

Windows

Refer to .github/workflows/release.yml for the build process.

The GitHub Actions workflow assumes that CMake, curl, gettext, Git, Inno Setup 6, Python, Visual Studio 2019 and 7-zip are already installed.

vslavik's precompiled Gettext binaries are probably the easiest way to get an up-to-date version of Gettext on Windows.

Linux

Refer to .github/workflows/ci.yml's flatpak job for the build process.

Building the Flatpak is relatively self-contained and should only need the following installed:

• git
• flatpak
• flatpak-builder
• python, pip and venv

Your Linux distribution may package Python, pip and venv separately.

Not all LOOT's features have been implemented for Linux builds. Issues labelled linux on LOOT's issue tracker cover such missing features where they can be implemented.

Note that building the Flatpak doesn't work in an unprivileged container. This includes running the generate_manifests.sh script.

CMake Variables

LOOT uses the following CMake variables to set build parameters:

Parameter	Values	Default	Description
LIBLOOT_URL	A URL	A GitHub release archive URL	The URL to get the libloot release archive from. By default, this is the URL of a libloot release archive hosted on GitHub. Specifying this is useful if you want to link to a libloot that was built and packaged locally.
LOOT_BUILD_TESTS	ON, OFF	ON	Whether or not to build LOOT's tests.
LOOT_RUN_CLANG_TIDY	ON, OFF	OFF	Whether or not to run clang-tidy during build. Has no effect when using CMake's MSVC generator.
MINIZIP_NG_URL	A URL	A release archive URL	The URL to get a source archive from.
OGDF_URL	A URL	A release archive URL	The URL to get a source archive from.
VALVE_FILE_VDF_URL	A URL	A GitHub commit archive URL	The URL to get a source archive from.
ZLIB_URL	A URL	A release archive URL	The URL to get a source archive from.

The URL parameters can be used to supply a local path if the archive has already been downloaded (e.g. for offline builds).

You may also need to set BOOST_ROOT if CMake cannot find Boost, and Qt6_ROOT (e.g. to C:/Qt/6.8.0/msvc2022_64) if CMake cannot find Qt.

Building The Documentation

The documentation is built using Sphinx. Install Python and make sure it's accessible from your PATH, then run:

py -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r docs/requirements.txt
sphinx-build -b html docs build/docs/html

If running on Linux, replace .venv\Scripts\activate with .venv/bin/activate.

Alternatively, you can use Docker to avoid changing your development environment, by running docker run -it --rm -v ${PWD}/docs:/docs/docs:ro -v ${PWD}/resources:/docs/resources:ro -v ${PWD}/build:/docs/build sphinxdoc/sphinx:7.1.2 bash to obtain a shell that you can use to run the two commands above.

Packaging Releases

Packaging scripts are provided for creating an installer on Windows and compressed archives on Windows and Linux.

Run the scripts/installer.iss Inno Setup script to build an installer executable in the build folder. If the unofficial Korean, Swedish and Simplified Chinese Inno Setup translation files are installed alongside the official translation files, then the installer script will also offer those language options. If they are not found, the installer will be built without them.

The archive packaging script requires Git, and on Windows it also requires 7-Zip, while on Linux it requires tar and xz. It can be run using python scripts/archive.py, and creates an archive for LOOT in the build folder. The archives are named as described in the Downloads section above.

The archive packaging script calls windeployqt.exe when run on Windows: it must be accessible from your PATH.